Mexico's president condemns reports of an old US investigation into alleged drug campaign donations

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president on Wednesday condemned media reports that the U.S. government launched an abortive investigation into claims that drug traffickers may have contributed money to his failed 2006 campaign.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador immediately interpreted the reports as a U.S. attack on his government and his Morena party before Mexico’s June 2 presidential election.

The controversy threatened to revive bilateral tensions just as both countries head into presidential elections, and could damage U.S.-Mexico cooperation on fighting drug trafficking, in much the same way as the 2020 U.S. arrest of a former Mexican defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos.

The stories described testimony by traffickers that they passed about $2 million to confidants of López Obrador in 2006, when he narrowly lost the race for president.

No concrete proof was found and the 2010 investigation was later dropped, but López Obrador suggested that U.S. agencies were behind the new round of reports about the old allegations.

“It is completely false, it's slander,” López Obrador said Wednesday at his daily media briefing. “I am not complaining about the journalists ... I'm complaining about the U.S. government, for allowing these immoral practices that violate political ethics.”

“It's not the journalist, it's higher up,” the president said, without specifying what U.S. agency he was accusing of being behind the stories.

López Obrador has long complained about the actions of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Mexico, and following the arrest of Cienfuegos, he imposed restrictions on U.S. agents in Mexico.

Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the DEA, feared that the latest dispute could mark a similar decline in cooperation.

“It's...